Sturgis-August 2001

To satisfy my CQK (Constant Quest for Knowledge) I depart for a recherche of the Great White North so as to answer that nagging question: Where does all the whiteness go when the snow melts?

This pilgrimage has my white mule loaded down like an itinerant migrant worker. At 4:00 AM I pick up a biker friend in Gulf Breeze and The Blond driving a trailer the size of an eighteen wheeler. The first leg of 700+ miles is uneventful. We stop at a Wal-Mart so I can replace my torn pants due to my priapic tendencies. In the parking lot a couple ask where are we heading? Answer, Sturgis. Her riposte, she flashes. Firm, succulent-oops ripped the pants again.

The second day we arrive in St Louis at daybreak. The Sun to our backs, the full Moon still shining, a beacon to the Gateway Arch. The arch, bathed in the golden splendor of the Sun's rays, frames an ascending plane billowing its contrail plumage. Manifest Destiny and...

Hell, I'm getting maudlin here. It's just some golden arch. It made me hungry and horny.

That night we make Sioux Falls. Dead deer carcases in town, on the cloverleaf! They sure know how to cull wild game.

That morning we make Mitchell's Corn Palace. A splendid example of Ear-chitecture. Then on to Badlands National Park and Wall to visit its famous drugstore before arriving in Rapid City to make camp before nightfall.

The next day finds us exploring Custer State Park. Buffalo, antelope, burros, prairie dogs are some of the hazards that you must contend with. Then we thread the Needle, Needles Highway that is. The Great White North's answer to Deal's Gap.

The 5th day we head for Deadwood and Lead and ride Spearfish Canyon. And finally Sturgis.

Well, I tell you, I've been to Main, Spain and Spokane. Smoked dope, jumped rope, fought and farted round the world, twice. Hell, I've even seen goats fuck in the market place. But I've never seen any shit quite like this.

Gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, religious hexers, alcoholics, sodomites, morphodites, drug addicts, reprobates, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs and lesbians populate the Harley myrmidons.

These multitudes lumber in elephantine fashion, sending waves of flesh rippling beneath their stretched straining leathers, shopping gleefully for jodhpurs to accentuate their thighs.

Those that have been recently incarcerated (easily recognizable due to the protuberant mouth and high forehead) where lined up at the tatoo zoo. No doubt to show them off as merit badges when their recidivistic tendencies rolled around.

After being totally debased and corrupted morally I head for Devil's Tower. Our nations first national park. There I meet, Farty McCrablice, a 60ish biker bitch. She takes me on a 85 mph ride on two lane patched pavement with 6% grade rises and drops. Riding with legs high on the pegs and steering one handed through the twisties this woman is one tough RIDER.

My last day I return to the Badlands to ride the gravel service roads, get away from other turistas and see the wild and wooly side.

When I leave the next morning it's raining and 49 degrees. The rain suit tears in the seat, freezing my gonads. I have to stop at a Whoa 'n Go, get duck tape and attempt to mitigate the damage. The Whoa girls volunteer to tape it up whilst still wearing the suit. Butch, from the Greek isle of Lesbos, robustly slaps the tape unto my copulatory organs smirking offensively.

Nebraska offers some respite from the rain. This part of our nation practices a little too much animal husbandry for my taste. The smell of cow shit permeates the still morning air for miles.

The back roads show off boring one cattle prod towns. There aren't enough people in this part of the world to even start a bowling league. The only excitement was when a bird stuck between the windshield and the highway lamps. He kept me company for a few miles as I talked and petted him before the carcass came loose, slammed into my shoulder and rudely departed.

Stopped over night in Long Lane, MO to commiserate with an old warrior friend and his wife who now grazes cattle for a living.

At first light my truant ways beckon. The Ozarks offer up twisties galore. Two-hundred miles without letup. You beg for mercy, "Make it stop, show me a flat straight road!" I named it the Devil's Backbone. On one, I almost suffered the same fate as the son of Daedalus. After pushing the envelope I came perilously close to having my wings melt.

After a nightmarish sleep full of S-curves, rode the length of the Natchez Trace. Boring but bet the fall colors are arrestingly beautiful.

The home run offered some twisties in Mississippi. And rain in the Sunshine state.

After 4,800+ miles my pyloric valve had slamed shut. Where the hell are those horse suppositories?

PS: The rejoinder is to the Great White North is that it is absorbed by the entire prairie populace as it is witnessed by their pale, ashen, and blanched legs. Lord, when they take off their shirts the bellys of those hunks of burning loves take on the consistency of egg albumen.

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